Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
But perhaps our solution seems superficial, and appears to rest on an
insufficient analysis. It might indeed be asked whether memory and
reminiscence, instead of belonging to the rational soul, might not
characterize the lower soul, or the composite of soul and body that
we call the organism? If indeed they belong to the lower soul, from
where does the latter derive them, and how does she possess them?
The same question may further be asked in the case of the organism.
To answer all this, we shall, as said above, have to study our own
interior principle to which memory belongs. If it be the soul that
possesses memory, we shall have to ask what faculty or part thereof
is constituted by memory. If, as has been urged by some, it be the
organism to which memory belongs, and considering the organism as the
sentient principle, how could this faculty operate within it? Besides,
what is it that we should call the organism? Further, is it the same
power that perceives sense-objects, and intelligible entities, or are
there two distinct powers?
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SENSATION.
26. If the two elements which compose the animal share in the act of
sensation, the sensation is common to the soul and the body, such as
the acts of piercing or weaving.[143] Thus, in sensation, the soul
plays the part of the workman, and the body that of his tool; the body
undergoes the experience, and serves as messenger to the soul; the soul
perceives the impression produced in the body, or by the body; or she
forms a judgment about the experience she has undergone. Consequently
sensation is an operation common to the soul and body.
IN ANY CASE MEMORY IS PECULIAR TO THE SOUL AND BODY.
This could not be the state of affairs with memory, by which the soul,
having already through sensation perceived the impression produced
in the body, preserves it, or dismisses it. It might be claimed that
memory also is common to the soul and body, because its efficiency
depends on the adjustments of the bodies. No doubt the body can hinder
or promote the exercise of memory, without this faculty ceasing to be
peculiar to the soul. How shall we try to prove that the memory of
knowledge acquired by study, belongs to the compound, and not to the
soul alone? If the organism be the composite of soul and body, in the
sense that it is some third object begotten by their union, it will be
absurd to say that it is neither soul nor body. Indeed, it could not be
anything different from the soul and body, neither if the soul and body
were transformed into the composite of which they are the elements,
nor if they formed a mixture, so that the soul would be no more than
potentially in the organism. Even in this case, it is still the soul,
and the soul alone, that would remember. Thus in a mixture of honey and
wine, it is the honey alone that should be credited with any sweetness
that may be tasted.
THAT THE SOUL IS INCARNATE IS NOT THE CAUSE OF HER POSSESSING MEMORY.
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